Case Study- Adele

Brief Background

Adele Laurie Blue Adkins was born on the 5 of may 1998 in Tottenham, London. Her mother was Penny Adkins and her farther was Marc Evans, however her farther left when Adele was only two years old. Adele started singing at the young age of 4 years old, and when growing up she spent most of her spare time singing and not studying. Adele graduated frin BRIT School for performing Arts and Technology in Croydon May 2006 with her class mates Leona Lewis and Jessie J.

Audience

Adele's target audience is 15 to 30 year olds females who are interested in Pop, soul, blue-eyed soul and R&B music. But her audience does consist of other people who are male, additionally alot older and younger than the target range.

Industry

Adele is extremely popular across the entire world, thanks to her breath taking music, however she is most popular in the UK. Her global success as a singer/songwriter has made her music very  accessible for all audience. Adele's music is all over YouTube, Spotify and Itunes and her own CD's. When she first started, her music started attracting listeners on Myspace in 2007 and he received the Brit award "Critics' Choice" and also won the BBC sound of 2008 poll.

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Previously, Adele's songs were within the soul, blue-eyed soul and R&B music genres, however recently her music investigated some mainstream Pop music elements, to potentially feed into a more main stream audience. Furthermore, her lyrics reflect some of her life's experiences and 

feelings, such as references to her up bringing, with only her mother to raise her. additionally, in some of her music videos contain narrative to link the song to a specific event and to relate to their audience.

Case Study- Stormzy

Brief Background

Stormzy, also known as "Micheal Ebenzer Kwadjo Omari Owuo Jr" was born 26 on July 1993 in Croydon, London, England and he is a grime/hip hop artist. Stormzy started rapping since he was 11 and would clash with much older rappers at local youth groups. He stated "I was a very naughty child, on the verge of getting expelled, but I wasn't a bad child; everything I did was for my own entertainment. But when I went into an exam I did really well." But then he adds "six A*s, three As and five Bs at GCSE, but then only achieved a "humbling" ABCDE at A-Level" 

Audience

Appeal and target audience
In Stormzy's early music career, his audience consisted of mainly young males who were interested in grime and hip hop. But recently he has gradually became more and more main stream with his pop music, therefore his audience has expended to males and females between the ages of 13-25. He appeals to his audience by making his songs relatable to his audience and he appeals to his audience through social media, like Twitter with his 1.22 million followers.

Other literal responses

Industry

Global appeal
Stormzy is very well known and popular across the world, but especially in the UK, his global success as a artist is very unique and outstanding. Additionally, Stormzy gained this popularity through how he published his music, making it very accessible for his audience, and other audiences. He did this through YouTube in his early music career, but later on he released music CD's and he was available on music platforms, such as Spotify and Itunes. 

Marketing and promotion 

Stormzy has been published in all kinds of press, but recently he has been on the news website "Independent" (https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/stormzy), this website explores important events in his music career. When Stormzy is in the press, he is being promoted, and his music is being advertised to a even larger audience. Stormzy has also been on: newspapers, magazines and TV. Additionally, Stormzy has been on radio talk shows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkyorIPV6zY) where they discuss his music and his life. Furthermore, Stormzy's music has also been promote through the range of awards he has won, as displayed above.

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Stormzy is a singer/songwriter, his songs is within the grime/hip genres but recently his music has explored pop genres, to potentially feed into a more main stream audience. The lyrics in his music also is used for the rhythm of the song and to display issues and experiences about his life and in the world to relate and appeal to his audience. Furthermore, he uses narrative in his music videos to further relate to a personal experience or a story to give his song meaning, making audiences decode it in many different ways. For example, in his song "Cigarette and Cush" he uses narrative to demonstrate a love story about a drug dealer and police officer, which makes the song have a deeper meaning if the audience reads into the lyrics.  Furthermore, in his music videos, Stormzy tends to wear fancy uniforms to counteract the stereotypes towards black males, even in "Cigarette and Cush" where he is a drug dealer.

Case Study- Ed Sheeran

Brief background

Ed Sheeran is a English singer and songwriter who has currently released three albums. He didn't come from a rich family, and he started off performing off the streets and now is performing across the world. 

Audience

Appeal and target audience
Ed Sheeran target audience is made up of a variety of males and females aged between 15-25, however this target audience is not a restriction, Ed Sheeran's audience also consists of much older or younger listeners. This is due to his wide range of different music genres he experiments and thrives in, this includes: rap, pop, indie and mixtures of in-between. Ed Sheeran appeals to his audience through social media, no wonder he has over 16.6 million Twitter followers. Furthermore, Ed appeals to his target audience due to his age, he is only 27, which is quite young compared to his major success the music industry.

Other literal responses
Ed Sheeran's popularity has grown massively due to his outstanding albums and unique singles. In 2011, Ed released the album "+" and it got over 4 million sales world wide, in 2014 his album "x" sold over 14 million copies and in 2017 he released "÷" and he got over 3 million sales. This can be demonstrated through this table below:
  




Uses and gratifications
Ed Sheeran uses social interactions to relate and appeal to his audience, in multiple occasions he has supported and surprised his fans. For example, he has surprised fans at their weddings by singing live at the wedding parties. Furthermore, in one instance he overheard a young girl singing one of his songs at a mall, so he jumped on stage and sang it with her. This presents that Ed loves to be with his fans to surprise and improve their lives.

Industry

Global appeal

As stated previously with information and statistics, Ed is very popular and his global success of an music artist is outstanding and will continue to do so. Furthermore, his popularity is due to the accessibility of his music from CD's to YouTube Videos, audiences are able to get his music anywhere. In YouTube alone he has over 28 million subscribers and his song "Shape of You"has received over 3.3 billion views world wide which is one of the most viewed videos on YouTube.

Marketing and promotion 

Ed has been all over the press; newspapers, magazines and TV. And he has been on countless radio talk shows discussing his newest songs and next plans. Furthermore, Ed Sheeran's music is promoted through his endless amounts of awards such: Grammy Award for Song of the Year and Brit Award for British Breakthrough Act. Some of his awards can be seen below:

In addition to this, Ed Sheeran has his own website to promote his next tour and newest songs: Here. Furthermore, he uses his website to advertise and sell his own branded merchandise of clothes and other products.

Who owns what radio station?

This blog post identifies who owns what radio station, to discover similarities and differences in ownerships between radio stations. 

For example, a unexpected ownership of the radio station "Smooth" lead to the research, that Smooth radio actually owns a number of very well known radio stations, such as:Heart, Capital and Classic FM, as well as LBC, Radio X and Gold. This company is led by Founder & Executive President, Ashley Tabor, Global Group CEO, Stephen Miron and Director of Broadcasting, Richard Park. However the radio station "Magic" and even the radio stations: Kiss, Absolute Radio and Heat radio is owned by the same company called "Bauer Radio" . 

Music Timeline

This blog explores the music timeline from 1950 to 2018 by showing the key moments in these years, such as the launch of new music platforms, digitalisation, talent competition, piracy and even complete new genres.

First music 
the first ever recorded proof of music was in 325, constantine declares Christianity the offcial religion of the Roman Empire. The spread of Christianity in the western world spurred the development of European music.

Music digitalised
Music was mainly digitalised in the early 2000s with the help of the rising technology of computers and other devices for the primary means to record, store, play and distribute music. Therefore, music was more available and had more of a variety for consumers across the world.

Music Plat forms
January 1993- Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) was the first free online music platform ever launched to the public.

January 2002- Last.fm was launched as a music platform that uses music recommender to build playlists and specific user profiles

September 2005- Pandora launched as a rebranding effort for music genome project with the goal of using scripts and song organisation programs to produce specific user radio stations which is based on the user's history and music.

Sir Ken Dodd died age 90

The infamous comedy superstar Sir Ken Dodd has sadly died at the old age of 90, he was a very well known comedian, who leaves his audiences with stitches due to his hilarious and original one liners.
Some of his best one-liners include (Information from BBC news):

1. "My dad knew I was going to be a comedian. When I was a baby, he said, 'Is this a joke?'"

2. "I love my girlfriend, my girlfriend loves me. She loves my hair, she loves my eyes, she loves my teeth. She loves my teeth because I'm the only person that can peel an orange through a tennis racket."

3. "I haven't spoken to my mother-in-law for 18 months. I don't like to interrupt her."

I have chosen this piece of news to demonstrate that famous people can always be remembered, and their downfalls will slowly fade away due to their reputation. Through my research i couldn't find any notable negative information. This could suggest that famous people would always have a good reputation over time, perhaps Harvey Weinstein's reputation would bounce back over time, as well. In my opinion,  I have not heard about Ken Dodd, but he seems like a amazing comedian and a generally happy and good person. 

Terrestrial vs Digital Television

This blog demonstrates the history of terrestrial and digital TV also how it has changed since it was first introduced. Furthermore, this blog explores the main players of television and shows have they have evolved and influenced the the TV industry.



Terrestrial television was the first broadcasting technology, its first lone ranged public broadcast transmission from Washington D.C on 1927. However, the The British Chambers of Commerce (BBC) was the first to have a regular television broadcasting schedule in 1930, with the use of BBC1, but these programmes were very poor quality due to its out-dated mechanical scan technology which didn't entice the public. TV became widespread after  WW2 with the use of new electronic scan technology inventions. Due to the success of radio networks, television broadcasting followed their model, which the use local TV stations in towns and cities with a range of government controlled(EU) and commercial(USA) content in channels. However all of these channels were displayed in black and white but was gradually revolutionised colour in 1950-1960. This brief history of television shows how far TV has changed and improved since 1927.

On the other hand, digital television is far more advanced and better quality than Terrestrial, therefore digital television has faded out most terrestrial television across the world, apart from some developing countries. Digital television was a innovation in 2006, which represents one of the most signification evolution of TV technology after colour TV. Digital TV allows a number channels in the same bandwidth that a Terrestrial TV needed to allow one channel. This change enabled a dramatic increase of more channels in comparison to basic terrestrial TV which only had a limited amount of channels.

Digital television changed the TV industry forever, making more information available for more audiences across the world. This proliferation of technology boosted the amount of TV shows alongside long running shows from before such as: Eastenders(1985), Coronation Street(1960) and Doctor who(1963). Additionally, it allowed countries to influence other countries through television, therefore propaganda could be easily spread with the use of the increase of global television channels. Without digital television, people would be secluded from from other countries and even their own, this is because digital television enables news channels to expand to the entire country easily, unlike local terrestrial channels. Due to the major success of digital television, reality TV shows such as: X-Factor(2004), Britain's Got Talent(2007) and I'm A Celebrity(2002) have sky rocked in views over the years because they broadcast the shows across the globe thanks the digital television.

However, in recent years, digital television channels has recently decreased in popularity due to the increase of web-based television providers such as Netflix and Amazon who allow audiences to stream a range of TV shows and films which they produce themselves, or from other channels with a monthly subscription. Therefore, the future of digital television is uncertain, due to competitors who challenge its throne. But that doesn't mean that TV hasn't got a place in the industry, it has a future but streaming is a growing industry.

In my opinion, I do not watch television very often, however it has come a long way and it has improved massively since it first started in 1927 from a single simple transmission. Additionally, i think that digital television was very important, and it did spread culture and information from one country to another to make them not secluded. But due to more advanced technology like the internet which allows organisations to stream shows for audiences, digital television has become increasingly irrelevant.